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Learning to optimize (L2O) has recently emerged as a promising approach to solving optimization problems by exploiting the strong prediction power of neural networks and offering lower runtime complexity than conventional solvers. While L2O…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-12-21 Zhihui Shao , Jianyi Yang , Cong Shen , Shaolei Ren

The primary paradigm in Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) are construction methods, where a neural network is trained to sequentially add one solution component at a time until a complete solution is constructed. We observe that the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Tim Dernedde , Daniela Thyssens , Lars Schmidt-Thieme

Combinatorial optimization serves as an essential part in many modern industrial applications. A great number of the problems are offline setting due to safety and/or cost issues. While simulation-based approaches appear difficult to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-07-21 Wenpeng Wei , Toshiko Aizono

Neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) has gained significant attention due to the potential of deep learning to efficiently solve combinatorial optimization problems. NCO has been widely applied to job shop scheduling problems (JSPs) with…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-19 Igor G. Smit , Yaoxin Wu , Pavel Troubil , Yingqian Zhang , Wim P. M. Nuijten

In recent years new deep learning approaches to solve combinatorial optimization problems, in particular NP-hard Vehicle Routing Problems (VRP), have been proposed. The most impactful of these methods are sequential neural construction…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-10-02 Jonas K. Falkner , Lars Schmidt-Thieme

We study combinatorial problems with real world applications such as machine scheduling, routing, and assignment. We propose a method that combines Reinforcement Learning (RL) and planning. This method can equally be applied to both the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2021-05-19 Joel Oren , Chana Ross , Maksym Lefarov , Felix Richter , Ayal Taitler , Zohar Feldman , Christian Daniel , Dotan Di Castro

Combinatorial optimization problems are crucial in industry. However, many COPs are NP-hard, causing the search space to grow exponentially with problem size and rendering large-scale instances computationally intractable. Conventional…

Emerging Technologies · Computer Science 2026-02-27 Eiji Kawase , Shuta Kikuchi , Hideaki Tamai , Shu Tanaka

A key challenge in solving a combinatorial optimization problem is how to guide the agent (i.e., solver) to efficiently explore the enormous search space. Conventional approaches often rely on enumeration (e.g., exhaustive, random, or tabu…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2020-08-11 Xingwen Zhang , Shuang Yang

Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) are significant Combinatorial Optimization (CO) problems holding substantial practical importance. Recently, Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO), which involves training deep learning models on extensive…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2024-12-03 Han Li , Fei Liu , Zhi Zheng , Yu Zhang , Zhenkun Wang

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based combinatorial optimization (CO) methods (i.e., DRL-NCO) have shown significant merit over the conventional CO solvers as DRL-NCO is capable of learning CO solvers less relying on problem-specific…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-01-06 Minsu Kim , Junyoung Park , Jinkyoo Park

Current methods for end-to-end constructive neural combinatorial optimization usually train a policy using behavior cloning from expert solutions or policy gradient methods from reinforcement learning. While behavior cloning is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Jonathan Pirnay , Dominik G. Grimm

Recent advancements in Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) have shown promise in solving routing problems like the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) and Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) without handcrafted designs. Research in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-02-25 Ke Li , Fei Liu , Zhengkun Wang , Qingfu Zhang

This paper presents a framework to tackle constrained combinatorial optimization problems using deep Reinforcement Learning (RL). To this end, we extend the Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) theory in order to deal with constraints in…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-06-23 Ruben Solozabal , Josu Ceberio , Martin Takáč

Combinatorial Optimization (CO) problems over graphs appear routinely in many applications such as in optimizing traffic, viral marketing in social networks, and matching for job allocation. Due to their combinatorial nature, these problems…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-02 Hao Tian , Sourav Medya , Wei Ye

Multiobjective combinatorial optimization (MOCO) problems can be found in many real-world applications. However, exactly solving these problems would be very challenging, particularly when they are NP-hard. Many handcrafted heuristic…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-05-10 Xi Lin , Zhiyuan Yang , Qingfu Zhang

Neural Combinatorial Optimization approaches have recently leveraged the expressiveness and flexibility of deep neural networks to learn efficient heuristics for hard Combinatorial Optimization (CO) problems. However, most of the current…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-10-04 Sahil Manchanda , Sofia Michel , Darko Drakulic , Jean-Marc Andreoli

Numerous Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) solvers have been proposed to address Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs). However, most of these solvers focus exclusively on single-vehicle VRP variants, overlooking the more realistic min-max…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-17 Xuan Wu , Di Wang , Chunguo Wu , Kaifang Qi , Chunyan Miao , Yubin Xiao , Jian Zhang , You Zhou

Combinatorial optimization (CO) is the fundamental problem at the intersection of computer science, applied mathematics, etc. The inherent hardness in CO problems brings up challenge for solving CO exactly, making deep-neural-network-based…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-02 Runzhong Wang , Yang Li , Junchi Yan , Xiaokang Yang

Model-free deep-reinforcement-based learning algorithms have been applied to a range of COPs~\cite{bello2016neural}~\cite{kool2018attention}~\cite{nazari2018reinforcement}. However, these approaches suffer from two key challenges when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-06-01 Nasrin Sultana , Jeffrey Chan , Tabinda Sarwar , A. K. Qin

Recent advancements in neural combinatorial optimization (NCO) methods have shown promising results in generating near-optimal solutions without the need for expert-crafted heuristics. However, high performance of these approaches often…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2025-02-13 Seong-Hyun Hong , Hyun-Sung Kim , Zian Jang , Deunsol Yoon , Hyungseok Song , Byung-Jun Lee